Interactive systems connected wide area networks, such as the Internet, have steadily evolved into vibrant mediums for social interaction and sharing of digital media. Indeed, an enormous amount of digital media generated by end users, media companies, and professional media creators is made available and shared across the Internet through web sites and uploading to various content hosting or aggregation systems and services (e.g., Flickr®, Yahoo!® Video, YouTube.com, etc.). End-users increasingly use or share media in a variety of on-line and interactive contexts. For example, an ever-increasing number of end-users create websites of various types, including blog pages, personalized social networking pages (such as Yahoo! 360, Facebook, or MySpace), that utilize digital media content, such as images, video, and music. Furthermore, digital media content is often found posted to online groups or forums, or other purpose-built sites, such as for small businesses, clubs, and special interest groups.
These two dynamics are closely related in that online media available on the Internet is often re-used or included: in the pages of web sites, social network sites, on-line forums, or other systems. For example, a user may create a blog about a topic of personal interest—e.g., beagles. When posting to the blog (creating a short text item), the user may include an image of a beagle that illustrates the point or subject of the post (e.g., beagle ear length). To locate an image, the user may access an image search engine and find a suitable image. To add the image to the blog post, the user may download that image to a hard drive or other data store, and then upload the image to the blog hosting site. Alternatively, if technically adept, the user may add HTML code to the blog post that will display the image in the post, causing the image to be loaded from its original location when the blog is viewed. Video and audio content may also be added to blogs or other network addressable resources, such as personal pages, in a similar manner.